From the beginning, over 10 years ago, SkyKick has exclusively been a to/through-partner vendor. Our 100% focus on partner success has drawn over 30,000 partners worldwide and provided us with a unique perspective and position to help MSPs, especially through challenging times. Without stepping into an economics class, there is increasing evidence and noise of the global economy wrestling with inflation and possible recession. In 2022, inflation spiked to 6.1% in Australia, 9.1% in the US, and 9.8% in Europe.
In the face of rising costs and economic uncertainty, especially after Cloud demand settles from COVID-19, MSPs have to do more than just break-even to survive and keep growing. The good news is – there are advantages to be had.
Advantages include converting unpredictable revenue to MRR and keeping accounts receivable strictly up to date – but a commonly under-represented focus is on investing in automation. In any IT organization labor costs are typically the biggest expense. Automation allows more employees to focus their time and energy on only those tasks that need to be done by a human that make the difference in growing their business.
Benefits of automation
- Address complex and recurring problems with a click
- Redirect resources from maintenance to innovation and revenue-generation
- Minimize human error as a result of manual work
- Expand and elevate what your team members can do
- Avoid team burnout
Investing time now in automation improves both your chance at short-term survival and your potential for future growth and success by cutting costs, driving employee and customer satisfaction, and opening new revenue streams. There are a few key ways that SkyKick products enable MSPs to upgrade their automation with very little effort. Here is a short list. Our Account Team would be happy to discuss any of the below in more detail – reach out to schedule a demo.
Number 1: Cloud Backup: Easy to set up and manage – including the option to automatically protect new customer employees
In a recent survey, the top partner priority in choosing a data protection solution was its ease of use. From the beginning, that has been the focus of Cloud Backup. It starts with automated discovery to get backups started in minutes and continues to save partners time and drive customer satisfaction with rapid search and restore options, from granular to bulk to point-in-time. And best of all, there is no technical expertise required. This includes an “auto-enable” feature that allows the MSP to choose to auto-protect any new M365 licenses that are added to the tenant. This saves time for both the MSP and the customer, while increasing the cyber security on the account.
Number 2: Partner-branded Cloud Backup self-service portal: Save time while promoting brand
This is a great example of how a simple feature and short time investment, can save hours of support time and increase profit on an account for years to come. To help partners further reduce support costs while promoting their brand with their customers, SkyKick provides partners with the option of creating a customer self-service portal where customers can perform their own data restores in a portal branded as the partner’s. In minutes, and again, with no technical expertise required, partners can create a portal with their name, logo, and even customer support information.
Number 3: No-code Microsoft 365 security assessments, remediation, and monitoring
With increasing and evolving security threats, customers need and are willing to pay for increased security services—90% of SMBs would hire an MSP with the right cybersecurity solution (Channel Futures) . However, traditionally, providing these services has required both time and technical expertise. Cloud Manager includes built-in automation and a no-code interface that enables any user to perform security-related actions accurately, efficiently, and securely.
For example, in minutes, a salesperson meeting with a potential customer can perform a 15-point analysis of a customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant security, including recommended actions. If desired, that same person can then run a command to remediate all discovered issues and offer the customer automated monitoring of those same security settings.
Check out this “Cyber Security Playbook” for step-by-step instructions to get moving
Number 4: Cross-customer Microsoft 365 configuration, monitoring, and reporting
Partners can save loads of time and be more efficient when they are able to watch, report and affect change on multiple customers at once. Jumping from portal to portal, manual report to manual report just slows everything down. On the other, some of our most successful Partners have adopted the Cross-customer abilities of Cloud Manager to that allow for persistent connectivity across all customers and applications, and makes it possible to run single commands to obtain detailed reports of any settings or to standardize settings across customers for improved ongoing management and support.
Examples across a range of Microsoft 365 management areas: